The Grey

A-Team and Smokin' Aces director Joe Carnahan's The Grey is an action film that's trying hard to more than just an action film. The problem however is that it was marketed as an action film, and that is what everyone will be expecting to see. All of the trailers depict a plane crashing in the Alaskan wilderness and a group of men, including Liam Neeson, fighting wolves to survive. The trailers show lots of running and yelling and brandishing of torches and lots of savage, snarling wolves. All three trailers also show Liam Neeson taping broken bottles to his hands to form glass fists. Now while all of these things were in the movie, they were not the main focus of the movie. And without spoiling anything, the glass fist thing is completely misrepresented in the trailer.

The Grey follows a group of men who have survived a plane crash on their way home from working at an Alaskan oil drilling company. As they fight to survive the harsh environment they realize they are being hunted by a pack of wolves. The focus of the film tries to be the characters, and most of the film is dedicated to them discussing their regrets and fears. It tries gives its characters more depth than the traditional action movie, and while that is possible and has been done perfectly in films like 28 Days Later and Spider-man 2, The Grey kind of stumbles on the line between goofy action and interesting drama.

I was surprised at first by the film's somber opening. It starts slow with Liam Neeson narrating and it establishes Neeson's character as a stoic loner on the verge of suicide. The camera is hand held and follows Neeson around very closely; it feels personal like a home movie. It took me out of the action movie mind set and I began to think that the film was going to have more depth than expected. I was then disappointed when the generic, predictable action sequences would start. And it was hard to take the themes of survival, suicide, and faith seriously when they were handled with clunky action movie dialogue.

I felt the best parts of The Grey were the couple of truly intense scenes which might discomfort some audience members, most notably when the plane is crashing. But by trying to achieve too much as both an action film and a drama, it left me disappointed by both aspects.

Five out of ten.